Batman Adventures Holiday Special #1, January 1995
This is a terrific three-page Batman / Joker sequence from the amazing Batman Animated team: Story by Paul Dini and Bruce Timm, art by Kevin Altieri. Kevin is primarily known for his role as an award-winning director and storyboard artist for Batman and other animated series. As such, Kevin’s done little actual comic book work. As this sequence clearly illustrates, that’s a shame.
Because of the theme? Because of the composition? Because of the way the artist uses design to contrast light and darkness? Because you have a special fondness for the comic book series? All of that? Something completely different?
I think this X-files page appeals to me for all of the reasons above and more. Obviously not what collectors typically think of when they think of a cool splash page. (Among its many quirks, you can’t see the characters’ faces.) But for me, something about this just works.
I’ve always loved science fiction and unexplained phenomena and the X-Files was a great combination of the two And I consider myself fortunate to have published the franchise twice: Once at Topps Comics during the show’s first-run heyday, and then 20 years later at IDW Publishing, where I remain convinced that our comics drove the renewed interest in the franchise.
The truth about Charlie Adlard? Charlie helped make the Walking Dead into one of the most important comics of the last 20 years. And Walking Dead, in turn, helped Charlie achieve the star status he deserves as a brilliant artist and storyteller. And I couldn’t be more pleased (and not at all surprised) about his success.
X-Statix 24 Unpublished CoverX-Statix 24 Published Cover
Dissecting unpublished vs. published covers is a fun activity, especially if you can’t find someone who knows specifically why a change was made, which leads to amusing speculation. (And I have forgotten to ask Mike on two different occasions. Sigh.)
In the case of these Allred X-Statix covers, logic dictates that the main reason to change here was necessary to match Iron Man’s costume in the series. That said, it’s interesting that quite a bit more was also changed in the final version. The IM figure in the published cover is much more prominent in the foreground of course, and, changing the Paris landmark from Arc de Triomphe to The Eiffel Tower fascinates me.
I acquired these covers separately, and a few years apart, but I remember the first time I saw the unpublished version at a quick glance I assumed the Arch was actually the well known Washington Square Arch in New York City which, although much smaller, is actually based on the Arc de Triomphe. (This piece of information has sent me down the Wikipedia rabbit hole — but I digress.)
Avengers… New York…. Makes sense, right? Except when I actually had the piece in hand, I realized that not only is the Arc de Triomphe very nicely photo referenced, it includes tiny-silhouetted figures for some scale. Definitely Paris.
But that couldn’t be the reason for the additional change? Could it? No one said, “The Eiffel Tower is more recognizable as Paris” did they?…. Would they?…
Regardless, I like some elements’ of both covers, but if I had my pick, I prefer the unpublished version. That might be the “wrong” Iron Man costume, but the retro feel is cooler, especially in Allred’s distinctive style. And overall, the inks are more appealing to me in the unpublished version.
Mike’s unique take on Peter Milligan’s X-Statix series was quirky and great fun — as you would expect it be. Late in the series — but before anyone could even conceive of a cinematic “MCU” — he added his version of the classic Avengers into the mix. In this iconic splash page (It’s now available as a poster) if you replace Scarlet Witch with either Black Widow or Hulk, you pretty much have the main cast of Endgame. Assembled indeed!
Art pages from the short-lived (but amazingly wonderful) Deadman series in Strange Adventures are often at odds with more traditional superhero series. Deadman — aka Boston Brand — is given the power to possess any living being in order to track down his killer. Which means Adams (and others) needed to draw many pages of Deadman “inhabiting” the body of an unwitting civilian. Therefore the character is often at the heart of the action sans costume.
This is one of those pages, and it’s a great one. Four dynamic panels —each a slightly different size — of a straight out slugfest. (Deadman is typically identified with a little aura around his civilian host —he’s the short-haired fellow without the moustache, getting his face smashed the first panel. And wow, when Deadman exits, that fellow is going to wake up very confused…)
I love looking at comic book covers — I can easily head down the rabbit hole on-line or at a convention scanning through them. To my mind, no one shook up the comic book cover world more than Neal Adams.
I was a kid when Neal’s realistically dynamic DC covers transformed the line, modernizing and freshening many titles pretty much overnight. 1968 rolled in, and suddenly Lois Lane wore contemporary clothing and had fashionable haircuts, Superboy’s foes looked genuinely menacing, and… Batman and Green Arrow?” The rest as they say, is history.
This is the unpublished cover for Lois Lane 87. Neal told me that any unpublished DC covers are “self-rejected,” meaning that he decided he didn’t like them himself, as opposed to any editorial dictate. Either way, you can see the switch makes sense. The “rejected” cover has Superman breaking up a scuffle. The published cover, where the characters are flying, rather than on the ground, makes it much clearer that two super-powered women are trying to kill each other. (Although Superman never had to actually break up the fight in the story itself. Lois handled it herself, thank you very much.)
That said, I like the overall appearance of the unpublished cover much better and the “Fortress of Solitude” interior, with chair and control center, is especially cool.
